We showed a lot of guts: Davids

David Wiese came up with a fine bowling effort while Henry Davids and Jacques Rudolph starred with the bat to help the Titans secure a comfortable 8-wicket win against Hyderabad in their Group B encounter. Wiese picked up 3/17 to restrict Hyderabad to 145/7 before skipper Davids led from the front, scoring a fine 64 off 42 balls while Rudolph hit an unbeaten 49 off 42 and they put on a 112-run-stand for the opening wicket as the South African sailed home with 3.3 overs to spare.

The victory boosted Titans' chances of making it to the semi-finals and a delighted captain Davids, speaking after the match, said the bowlers did a good job to pull things back after the Sunrisers side had started off well.

"It was really nice to get it right. We were looking down the barrel after the start they got but David Wiese pulled the game back for us. We got Dhawan and Parthiv quickly and then kept things tight. We were very patient and we showed a lot of guts there out in the middle."

The big win also helped the Titans improve their net run-rate and Davids, who was also the Man of the Match for his fine efforts with the bat, said: "I enjoyed playing today. I just gave myself a couple of balls before taking the attack to them and I am happy that it worked."

While praising Dale Steyn for batting well at the end, Shikhar Dhawan blamed the middle-order batsmen for not being able to help the Hyderabad side to a bigger score and mentioned that the domestic players need to perform better.

"We started off really well but the batsmen could not make any significant scores. We lost wickets at regular intervals as well and we ended up making a poor total even though Dale Steyn batted well in the last over," Dhawan said.

Dhawan mentioned that the Hyderabad batters did not handle the short ball well in this game while adding that it was wrong to expect Perera and Sammy lift them in every game.

"We couldn't play the short ball well. The domestic players need to perform and score big runs. We can't expect Perera and Sammy to push the score every game. We need to work a lot," the Hyderabad captain said.